In his last LGBT History Month post, Professor Ross Balzaretti, Department of History, concludes his examination of sexuality in the Dark Ages. It is frequently presumed that women in the distant past had no or little voice in public affairs. This is far from true. For example, in the Carolingian Empire (which covered most of modern …

In his second post, Professor Ross Balzaretti, Department of History, continues to explore sexuality in the Dark Ages. Alcuin of York, one of the most influential advisors of Charlemagne (the famous emperor of the west in the early ninth century), may have been gay. That, at least, is the conclusion of some of those who …

In this guest post, Professor Ross Balzaretti, Department of History, explores sexuality in the Dark Ages. February 2015 marks the eleventh anniversary of my module ‘Sexuality in Early Medieval Europe’ which challenges students to compare their own ideas about sex and sexuality with those to be found in in western Europe in distant writings from …